Throughout all recorded history, slavery and child labour were near universal facts of life, all over the world. Then suddenly over a period of 100 years (the late 18th and 19th centuries,) the global slave trade came to a grinding halt. Highly organized abolitionists from the United States, Europe and the Caribbean drove the slave traders from the high seas and formally ended legal slavery.
It is very true that 17th century British Quakers and American Evangelical Christians played a leading role in galvanizing the West to recognize the ideals of human equality and the inherent immorality of slavery. However, I believe that it is an over simplification to attribute this solely to a great spiritual awakening.
So, correlation or causation?
This is a very important thought exercise, as there are those today who argue that society can through altruism, similarly transform or transition modern civilization to an entirely new energy economy and that all we need to accommodate this transition is to embrace a new belief system.
When we look past the revolution in sentiments towards slavery, we also see that the practice of child labor underwent a similar rapid rate of progressive change.
From the Factory Act 1802 to the Education and Compulsory Schooling Acts (1870–1880) and finally with the 1918 Education Act, child labour, (other than part-time, after-school activities,) was effectively ended as a systemic practice in Great Britain.
Continuing with this focus on Great Britain, history shows that England and Wales experienced a fundamental transformation in their demographics, from an agrarian economy in the 17th century to an industrialized nation by the late 19th century.
The driver for this massive shift in demographics was of course, the agricultural and industrial revolution, which radically improved the productivity of farming labor. Fast forward to today, and less than 1% of British citizens are employed in the agricultural sector.
This evolution has since been repeated the world over. As mechanization enhances productivity, individual human lives gain greater value, decreasing both the reliance on slave labour and the motivation to have large families for low-cost labour purposes.
When we examine the history of coal-fired steam engines, we find the first known device was built by Thomas Savery in 1698..It was called a Miner’s Friend and used to pump water out of underground coal mines.
Meanwhile George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers,) was born in July 1624 in Drayton-in-the-Clay (now called Fenny Drayton), Leicestershire, England. While George Fox fought for equality, Thomas Savery empowered the individual to radically achieve more in one day of labor than ever possible in human history.
The positive impact that steam engines had on agriculture productivity is seen in the demographic change in Britain over the 200 years from 1700 to the end of the 1800s.
Before the advent of agricultural industrialization, approximately four farm workers were required to produce enough excess calories to support a single non-farmer worker.
By the end of the 1800s however, one farm worker could support between 6 to 10 non-farm workers. Note that this large enhancement in agricultural productivity was even before the advent of the Otto (gasoline) and Diesel Cycles, upon which most advances in industrialized agriculture within the 20th century to the present have depended.
If we fast forward to the present day, we find that in an advanced country like Canada, only 5% of the population is employed in the broader agricultural sector. But productivity is so high that total production is sufficient to support a population of 300 to 325 million. Canada exports much more agricultural products than it consumes.
(Note that this Grok 3 estimate assumes full caloric utilization, ignoring waste, non-food uses, and dietary variety. However, it highlights Canada’s capacity as a net food exporter.)
As I am sitting here at my laptop at the head of my dining room table, I am watching my neighbour in his large 8 wheel tractor working his land on the opposite side of the valley. This amazing man, together with his father in his 60s, is able to manage 2,000 acres of grain producing farmlands, as well as 200 head of cattle.
In other words, modern farming practices have achieved a state of productivity so far advanced relative to the pre-industrial period, that a single farm worker can produce enough food to support well over 100 people. Replacing agricultural workers with internal combustion engines and hydrocarbons is the first order reason for this massive expansion in labor productivity.
To give a better sense of the average ratio of hydrocarbon calories used per calorie of food energy eaten in a modern society, I show an estimate from the Post Carbon Institute.
As shown, farming practices, together with food processing and transportation to market, consume almost 400% more hydrocarbon energy than the metabolic energy produced and transported. Equally important is the energy costs of household food storage and preparation, coming in around 230% higher than the metabolic energy consumed.
In other words, 90% of the energy flux through the human food supply chain is of geological origin and the remaining 10% is captured solar radiation from photosynthesis.
Now let’s get back to correlation versus causation.
When we examine the New Testament scriptures, we find many instances where the apostles admonish slaves to serve their masters in all sincerity and likewise urge masters to treat their slaves with respect.
For example:
"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free." - Ephesians 6:5-8
"Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven." - Colossians 4:1
But, this is not an endorsement of slavery, it is simply a pragmatic acknowledgement that slavery was integral to life in more affluent nations, as it was during the age of the Roman Empire.
Therefore, it is doubtful that the Quakers and Evangelicals conceived of their revolutionary value system from the New Testament scriptures. Rather, I suspect that George Fox, as a true humanitarian, recognized the opportunity for positive societal change during the early days of industrialization.
In other words, the steam engine may have inspired the early Abolitionists, and Industrialists simply rode the wave of positive sentiment for ending the dependence on slave and child labor in favour of much more productive mechanical workers.
Had the likes of Thomas Savery, Thomas Newcomen or James Watt not invented early combustion engines, there would have been no physical means or engine to drive the societal transition to a much more progressively productive state and both slavery and child labor would have persisted.
